Who Owns The Middle East?
A Middle-East Peace Proposal
The
Jews of Israel, most of the Muslims of all nations and many of the Christian
people of the world accept the story of Abraham told in the book of Genesis as
the father of both Isaac and Ishmael to be authentic. Both the Jews and Muslims believe there to be
one God who dealt with Abraham. Both
Jews and Muslims accept the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) to be the
word of God with the Muslims caveat that some
of the Torah may have been altered.
There
has been war over the Middle East for nearly 3,500 years. The present conflict began in 1948. There is only one way to achieve peace
between the Jews and Muslims: all concerned parties should accept the boundaries
of land given to Abraham’s descendents by God as recorded in the Torah.
1 Abraham’s
Covenant Land
God
bequeathed certain lands to Abraham’s descendents. God’s covenant with Abraham was made an
unalterable covenant – God swore by His own Being without any conditions
[Genesis 15:13-21; 22:16-19] – thus making it an eternal covenant.
This
land encompasses all the Middle-East, “from the river of Egypt (the Nile) to
the great river, the Euphrates”. It
includes the Arabian Peninsula, the Sinai Peninsula and the countries of
Israel, Jordon, Saudi Arabia and parts of Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
2 Ishmael’s
Covenant Land
This
land encompasses all of Saudi Arabia – the territory to the south and east of a
line from (1) Havilah to (2) Shur. Even
before the Saud dynasty added its name to this land it was called “Arabia” –
the land of Arabs.
The word
“Arab” has interesting origins.
Webster’s dictionary offers this listing under the word Arab:
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin Arabus, Arabs,
from Greek Arab-, Araps, of Semitic origin; akin to Akkadian Arabu,
Aribi desert nomads, Arabic A`rAb Bedouins
1 a: a member of the Semitic people of the Arabian Peninsula b: a member of an
Arabic-speaking people
Yet an
examination of a Hebrew/English lexicon offers a far different, more ancient
etymology. The Hebrew word `arab
is of Chaldean/Babylonian origin and its root form means “to mingle” or “to
mix”. As it came to be used in the
Hebrew vernacular, it meant, “to grow dusky at sunset”, “to be darkened as at
the end of the day”. It was used by the
Chaldean/Babylonians to refer to Arabia or the people of Arabia because the
people were a mixture of many races including some of those of sub-Saharan
Africa.
The Hebrew
word `arab is
translated as “mixture” or “mixed” in these verses from Daniel:
Just as you saw that the feet and toes were
partly of baked clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom; yet
it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed [`arab] with clay.
And just as you saw the iron mixed with
baked clay, so the people will be a mixture [`arab] and will
not remain united, any more than iron mixes [`arab] with
clay. NIV Daniel 2:41, 43
Easton's
Bible Dictionary helps explain who the Arabs were and are:
The whole land [Arabia] appears (Gen. 10) to have been inhabited by a variety of
tribes of different lineage, Ishmaelites, Arabians, Idumeans, Horites,
and Edomites; but at length becoming amalgamated, they came to be
known by the general designation of Arabs. The modern nation of Arabs is
predominantly Ishmaelite. Their language is the most developed and the
richest of all the Semitic languages, and is of great value to the student of
Hebrew.
3 Esau (Edom)
_Moab_Ammon Covenant Land
It should be noted that these territories do not include the land north of Ammon nor do they include the territory west of the Jordan River. That territory was bequeathed to Abraham’s son Isaac and Isaac’s son Jacob and specified as owned by the tribes formed by Jacob’s 12 sons. Explanation and specifics follow below.
“Edom” was
another name for Esau [Genesis 25:30] who was Isaac’s son and twin brother of
Jacob. Esau and Ishmael and their
descendents were intertwined from the start because Esau married Ishmael’s
daughter. Esau was married to two
Hittite women and this was a source of a lot of grief for his father Isaac and
his mother Rebekah [Genesis 26:34-35].
Esau tried to please Isaac by marrying Ishmael’s daughter.
Now
Esau learned that Isaac had blessed Jacob and had sent him to Paddan Aram to
take a wife from there, and that when he blessed him he commanded him, "Do
not marry a Canaanite woman, and that Jacob had obeyed his father and mother
and had gone to Paddan Aram. Esau then realized how displeasing the Canaanite
women were to his father Isaac; so he went to Ishmael and married Mahalath,
the sister of Nebaioth and daughter of Ishmael son of Abraham, in addition
to the wives he already had. NIV Genesis 28:6-9
Ammon and Moab
were the sons of Abraham’s nephew, Lot, whom Abraham “adopted” upon the death
of his brother Nahor [Genesis 11:27-32; 12:1-4; 13:5]. As shown above, they too
– as descendents of Abraham – were given territory by God.
The descendents
of Ishmael, Esau, Ammon and Moab intermarried and also married some of the
inhabitants of Africa because of the trade between the people of Arabia and
those of Egypt and Ethiopia and other areas of Africa. It was this latter mingling that caused them
to be referred to by the Hebrew word `arab that is of
Chaldean/Babylonian origin with its root form meaning “to mingle” or “to mix”
and “to become darkened”.
4
Israel’s Covenant Land
God specifically
told the Israelites after their 400 years in captivity in Egypt as they were
ready to enter the “promised land” that they should not encroach upon the
territory or destroy the people of the lands of Edom, Moab and Ammon. The Israelite territory was laid out by God
in specific detail and with some help from old maps, names of cities and
mountains that remain the same or nearly the same today and some guesses of the
boundaries between certain known areas, that territory can easily be outlined
today.
If Muslims truly
believe in one God, whom they call Allah, and Jews believe in one God for whom
they have the sacred name not written or uttered, and if they believe Him to be
the God of Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Esau, Moab and Ammon, then the Arabs
and the Jews should honor the boundaries of the territory as given by God and
the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions should likewise honor those
boundaries.
The
Middle East Today
Abraham’s
Covenant Land stretches from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in
Iraq. The majority of this territory is
contained in the Arabian Peninsula that was granted to the descendents of
Ishmael. The territories granted to
Ammon, Moab and Esau (Edom) were overrun by the Babylonians in the middle 500’s
BC just after the armies of Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem (587 BC) and moved
its Jewish inhabitants to Babylon (today’s Iraq) and the majority of the
inhabitants of that territory were killed and the rest taken captive as
prophesied through the prophet Ezekiel [chapter 25].
The whole Arabian
Peninsula came under the rule of Islam and Mohammad in 622-632 AD with the
Rashidun Caliphs expanding the territory across North Africa and Asia with the
even larger expansion under the Umayyad Caliphate to include all of North
Africa around the Mediterranean and present day Spain as well as more of the
Asian continent.
The Caliphate, 622–750
Expansion under the Prophet Muhammad, 622–632
Expansion during the Rashidun Caliphs, 632–661
Expansion during the Umayyad Caliphate, 661–750
The height of
Muslim Empire came with the Ottoman Empire that lasted into the 20th
Century though drastically weakened in its latter stages.
The Ottoman Empire
The
Middle East 2009
According
to the Bible the people of the “promised land” (Palestine/Canaan) included the
Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites,
Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites. [NIV Genesis 15:19-21] God judged these people to be so corrupt, so
evil, that they were to be completely destroyed. Among their worship practices was the burning
of their children as offerings to their gods [Deuteronomy 12:31]. The Israelites did not follow this
instruction though God had warned them of the consequences of their failure to
follow that instruction.
"`But if you do not
drive out the inhabitants of the land, those you allow to remain will become
barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides. They will give you trouble in the
land where you will live. And then I will do to you what I plan to do to
them.'" NIV Numbers 33:55-56
These people
blended with the descendents of Ishmael, Moab, Ammon and Esau and their
descendents are among the Arab people today and those people are certainly among
the “barbs” and “thorns” afflicting the modern state of Israel.
God foretold the
enmity between the Arabs and Jews more than 4,000 years ago.
There would be enmity and hatred from the descendents of Ishmael.
The angel of the LORD also said to her [Hagar, Ishmael’s mother]: "You are now with child and you will have a son.
You shall name him Ishmael, for the LORD has heard of your misery. He will be a
wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand
against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers." NIV Genesis 16:11-12
There would be hatred and enmity from the descendents of Esau, Jacob’s twin brother who went to Isaac after realizing that Jacob had received the birthright blessings.
Esau said to his father, "Do you
have only one blessing, my father? Bless me too, my father!" Then Esau
wept aloud.
His father Isaac answered him,
"Your dwelling will be away from the earth's richness, away from the dew
of heaven above [Esau was to live in the desert]. You will live by the sword and you will serve your
brother. But when you grow restless, you will throw his yoke from off your
neck." [The Arab nations held sway
over nearly as large an empire as Rome with the Ottoman Empire. Even more recently, they broke away from the
hegemony of Great Britain not long after World War II.]
Esau held a grudge against Jacob
because of the blessing his father had given him. He said to himself, "The
days of mourning for my father are near; then I will kill my brother Jacob."
NIV Genesis 27:38-41
Conclusion
The Jews and
their relatives – the rest of the Israelites (read the essay “The Hand of God” for their
identification) – will always face this enmity and hatred from the descendents
of Ishmael, Esau, Moab, Ammon and the remnants of the nations that lived in the
“promised land” before the Israelites laid claim to it.
That is, unless
the Arabs, Jews and Israelites are willing to accept the will of God and His
proclamation of the ownership of the lands of the Middle East.
Did God have the
right to give these lands to whomever He chose?
The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it, the world, and
all who live in it; for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the
waters. NIV Psalms 24:1-2
Clay Willis
November 26, 2009